Blue Mountains News

National Recycling Week 13 -19 November

Planet Ark’s National Recycling Week (13 – 19 November) is a great opportunity to celebrate our recycling success in the Blue Mountains.

In its first year, the new waste service achieved a 28% reduction in waste to landfill from households, close to $1.9 million saved in landfill disposal costs, over 9000 tonnes of garden organics collected for recycling and approximately 9300 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions avoided.

Mayor, Cr Mark Greenhill said, “This is a great result and we should all be proud of this achievement. However, we can still improve our recycling efforts.”

Our red bin waste contains 8% (700 grams per household per week) of material that could have gone in the recycling bin.

By capturing all recyclables in the yellow bin, instead of sending them to landfill in our red bins, will increase the life of the Blaxland landfill, and keep valuable resources like plastic, metal and paper in circulation.

Cr Greenhill said, “We’re still seeing a number of wrong items going into our yellow bins which can contaminate whole truck loads. The main culprit is soft plastics.”

Monitoring shows the main mistakes being made with items in bins are:

PLASTIC BAGS IN THE RECYCLING BIN
Tip your recyclables into the recycling bin loose – not wrapped in a plastic bag. Soft plastics can’t be recycled through the household recycling bin. They either need to be recycled via your local supermarket, or put into your red garbage bin as a last resort.

PLASTIC WRAPPED MAGAZINES OR NEWSPAPERS
Again, ditch the soft plastic, it can’t be recycled. Remove soft plastic wrap and THEN throw the magazine or newspaper into your recycling.

Blue Mountains City Council Waste and Recycling information: www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/bins

Blaxland and Katoomba Resource Recovery and Waste Management accept the following items for FREE recycling (when separated from other materials):

Polystyrene – NEW!!

Computers and televisions

Household recyclables

Scrap metal such as whitegoods and car bodies

Hazardous household items and chemicals can be disposed during our Chemical CleanOut days. The next CleanOut event is Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 November at Katoomba Resource Recovery and Waste Management Facility.